Shades of Fortune (40 page)

“No,” he says. “It wasn't your father's cousin Nate. Nate died in nineteen sixty-two. This is a case that goes back to nineteen forty-one, the year Nate left the company—and the year coincidentally when the diaries end. The criminal is still very much alive. You see, what I'm trying to tell you, Mimi, is that there are entries in those diaries that I don't think you'd
want
to know about, and that
I
don't want you to know about.” He covers her hand with his, and she allows it to rest there a moment before withdrawing hers. “And the reason I don't is because I care about your family, too, believe it or not, and don't want them hurt. And the only reason I care about your family, of course, is because I care about you and don't want you to be hurt.”

Suddenly she finds herself becoming annoyed with him. “Oh, for heaven's sake, Michael, cut out this cat-and-mouse game. Everyone knows it's a game you play very well. You don't need to show off for me.”

“I think those diaries should be destroyed,” he says. “Too many people could be hurt by what's there. Including you. I'd like to ask your permission to destroy them.”

“I think,” she says, “that I should discuss this with my husband, who also happens to be my lawyer—after we've examined these diaries, which, in any event, are my property.”

“Tell me something,” he says. “Did Brad ever know about you and me?”

“What has that got to do with this discussion?”

“Rather a lot, I'm afraid. I don't mean about when we were supposed to be engaged. I mean later. I mean Riverside Drive. I mean the way you straightened my sock drawer. I mean the cranberry juice, and the Kellogg's bran flakes. I mean the days of the little white stars, the days when I was trying to make some sense of that crazy mishmash that turned out to be your grandfather's estate, the days of our brief reencounter with one another, the days I called our
Strange Interlude
days.”

“Are you implying
that's
in Grandpa's diaries? How could it be? He was dead by then. You're really trying my patience, Michael. Please stop this. I really think I want to go.” And, flipping her napkin on the table, she starts to rise, but, gently pressing her arm downward, he restrains her.

“Do you love him, Mimi?” he asks. “Did you ever love him?”

“Brad and I have been happily married for nearly thirty years.”

“That's not an answer, is it?”

“It's
my
answer. Now, please—”

“And—happily? He has a girlfriend, you know.”

“Nonsense.”

With the tip of his left forefinger, he pulls down the lower lid of his left eye in a European gesture of disbelief. “I saw him with her at Le Cirque,” he says. “So did you.”

“It's nothing serious. It's just a mid-life fling.”

“And what was it that we had? A youthful fling? Was that all it was? Why do I remember how you liked your tea?”

“I really don't know what you're talking about.”

“Half a lump of sugar with your tea. You told me that at your grandfather's house they always gave you one lump, because that's what you'd been told to ask for when you first went there as a little girl. But you really preferred just half a lump, and a slice of lemon. Do you remember when I brought you tea in bed on Riverside Drive—with half a lump and a lemon slice? What you said then?”

“What I said then has absolutely nothing to do with why I met you here tonight. And I'm not going to listen to any more of this drivel.”

“And Paul Anka singing on the radio, ‘Put Your Head on My Shoulder'? That was your favorite song.”

“Michael, you lured me here tonight with a promise to show me my grandfather's—allegedly—all-revealing diaries. But you haven't produced a single page. What's going on?”

“Oh, I could show you plenty of pages. Just not all of them.”

“Oh. So now I think I get it. If I want to see these diaries—which may or may not even exist—I have to come up to your place to see them. Right? Is this the old come-up-and-see-my-etchings approach? Really, you disappoint me. I would have expected something a little more original from the great Michael Horowitz. Now I've really got to go.”

“In the old days, you trusted me, Mimi. You needed me then. You said you loved me.”

“I may have been vulnerable then. I'm not vulnerable now.”

“Why do you take everything I say as a kind of threat? Even loving things. Do you remember, when you first came to my apartment, you wore my ring?”

“I may have been foolish then. I'm not now. I'm as tough as you are. Now—”

“Do you still have it—the ring?”

“Irrelevant question! Now let me go.”

Once more he makes the gesture with his lower eyelid. “Sure you do. Don't lie to me, Mimi. You were always a lousy liar. I know you kept it so you'd always remember me.”

“And you're turning into an absolute pest. Now let go of my arm. Do you want me to make a scene? I can, you know.”

Still holding her arm, he says quietly, “I just want you to hear me out. In the old days, you always believed in hearing the other guy out.”

She relaxes slightly. “Then will you please tell me something?” she says. “Why have you suddenly come back at me after all these years? Why are you trying to break me down? It doesn't make any sense—no sense at all. Everything we had was over long ago. Why have you suddenly come back at me, thirty years later, stirring things up again? What the hell do you want? Why?”

“It's pretty simple,” he says. “You were the first
nice
girl I'd ever met. Who was I? A caterer's kid from Queens. But you were the first
nice
girl. You still are. I've had a lot of girls since then, I admit that. I know my reputation—the Romeo of Real Estate, and all that crap. But there's never been another
nice
girl. And all these years I've waited—waited until I was rich enough—richer than the Myersons ever were—rich enough to come back and claim you, to come back again and have what we had again, the little white stars, because those were things I'd never had before and, believe me, I've never had since with anyone. That's why I'm back: because I find you just as beautiful and desirable as ever, even more so. Your
fah-nee, fah-nee face
, remember? That's why I'm back: to have those things again, before it's too late for both of us.”

“The operative verb is
claim
isn't it? You've come back to stake a claim on me. Well, you can't. Because I'm not some piece of real estate! I'm not one of your co-op apartment houses. I'm not one of your hotels. I think what you really want is to control me, to own me, but nobody owns anybody. You want to control me by saying you have incriminating evidence about my family in Grandpa's diaries. That's called blackmail, Michael. And I'm not going to be blackmailed, and I am not going to be controlled. I am not for sale!”

“I want you back,” he says simply, “because I love you.”

“I don't think so. I think you want me back because I'm the only game you ever lost, the only deal you didn't cinch. I think your poor little male ego has been bruised all these years.”

He shakes his head slowly back and forth. “Why don't you admit some things?” he says.

“And why are you making these threats? Because that's what they are—threats. Criminal manslaughter! Just who the hell are you talking about, anyway?”

He hesitates. “Your mother, perhaps?”

“That's a lie! Mother was hundreds of miles away when Daddy died. You've been talking to Granny Flo, haven't you? You've been talking to all my relatives, trying to get them to sell their stock to you. I know what you've been up to, and it's not going to work. If you think you hold some trump card against me, you've picked the wrong opponent. And if you've been listening to what Granny Flo says, you're even crazier than she is.”

“I'm not talking about your Granny Flo, and I'm not talking about your father. I'm talking about stuff that's in those diaries, and I'm talking about stuff that could damage living members of your family. But I'm not going to tell you anything more. I've told you more than I wanted to already.”

“More threats. More bullying. That's all you are, Michael, is a bully. That's all you ever were.”

“You didn't use to think so, did you, kiddo? Remember?”

“And stop calling me kiddo. I'm not a kid anymore, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“How can you have forgotten, when I remember everything?” He inches closer to her on the banquette. “Why can't you be honest with yourself? Do you remember the day we drove out to the new house I was building in East Orange? Do you remember walking through the empty rooms, telling me where I should put the piano? What color I should paint the walls of the den? Chinese red, you said—a nice lipstick color. And cafe curtains. The year was nineteen sixty, and cafe curtains were the big thing. Why do I remember all of this? The things you said you'd do if the house were yours?”

“Ancient history. I haven't thought of that for years.”

“And do you remember we walked out onto the terrace, where the pool was going to be, and you looked across at the city skyline, and you said that was exactly where you'd like to keep New York—miles away, on the other side of the river? And you told me that you'd like to live in that house with me, told me that you were free now, and were ready to divorce Brad and marry me. Do you remember any of that? I remember, because you told me that you'd always loved
me
.”

“I remember,” she says evenly, “that it was a terrible time for me. Grandpa had just died, my father was at his wits' end trying to pick up the pieces of the company, and everything in the family seemed to be falling apart, and you seemed to be the only one—”

“The only one who what?”

“The only one who seemed able to make any sense out of the shambles Grandpa had left things in. It was a terrible time, and I was frightened, irrational, not knowing what was going to happen. I was weak then—at the weakest point in my life. I'm strong now. You were useful to us then. You're not useful now.”

“Yes, irrational. Don't you think I saw that? That's why I said no—no, because you'd made your choice of husbands. And I didn't want to be called a home-wrecker.”

“Yes! So pious, weren't you? Mr. Goody Two-Shoes! But now that you're so rich and powerful, you think you have a perfect right to try to wreck any home you want! Well, you can't wreck mine!”

“Ah,” he says. “So that's it. You're still angry at me because I rejected your proposal.”

“You son of a bitch. I won't even dignify that comment with an answer.”

“But how can I be a home-wrecker now? Your home's already wrecked, isn't it?”

“That. Is. Not. True,” she says through clenched teeth, making each word a sentence. “Now let me—”

“I want you back because I think that now you're able to make a sensible choice between Brad and me.”

“The only choice I'm making is to leave this restaurant. If you have property belonging to my family, I'll sue to get it back. If you have plans to take over my company, I'll see you in court on that matter, too. Understand one thing, Michael. Nothing about me or my life belongs to you. Is that quite clear? Now I think I'm ready to make my scene. Ready? Here goes.
Waiter!
” she calls.

“And because I think you're the mother of my son.”

She quickly reaches for her drink and, in so doing, overturns her half-filled cocktail glass. Both of them watch as the pool of clear liquid spreads across the white tablecloth, Mimi's expression frozen.

“Be honest, Mimi,” he says softly. “You have something that I want. I have something that you want. Why don't we both admit that what we've both always wanted is each other?”

“Dearest Mother,” she had written when the little party of summer tourists arrived at the Hotel du Palais in Lausanne late in August of that year:

I feel a little strange writing to you to ask you the question that I am about to ask you, but there is no one else whom I can ask, and so I am asking you
.

There is a young man I've met who is in our tour group. His name is Bradford Moore, Jr., and he is from Boston, Mass. He is 24 years old, 6 ft. tall, with dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, and he graduated in June from Harvard Law School. This fall, he will start working with a N.Y. law firm downtown. He is nice, and pretty funny, though in a serious sort of way. For instance, he says that his real name could be Bradford Moore IV, but he thinks all that II, HI, and IV business is pretty silly, so he settles for the “Jr
.”

Those are the vital statistics. I like him very much. But the important thing is that he has asked me to marry him
.

Now this is the hard part, Mother. As you know, I was planning to start at Smith in September, and I have my scholarship and everything. I was really looking forward to college, and I told Brad that, but he doesn't want to wait four more years. He says he is too much in love with me to wait four years, with me in Northampton and him in N.Y.C. He says four years is too long to wait, and he wants us to be married as soon as possible, if my family approves
.

Now here is the question, which is really two questions. For one thing, he isn't Jewish. In fact, one of his grandfathers was the minister in the First Congregational Church of Concord, Mass., for several years. He says it doesn't matter to him that I'm Jewish, if it doesn't matter to me, or to my family, that he isn't. Several of the partners in the law firm he'll be joining are Jews, and he likes them very much. He likes and admires the Jews. But
—
what do you and Daddy think? More important, what will Grandpa say?

Now the second question, which is really the most important question to me. He says he is in love with me, but I don't know whether I'm in love with him because I'm not sure I know what being in love means. I
thought
I was in love with Michael H., but this feeling of mine now is so different! I mean, I like everything about him. He is so nice, so kind and thoughtful, and I love being with him. I like being with him better than any friend I've ever known, just because he is so nice to be with. We laugh at the same things, and we talk and talk and talk. Is that what being in love feels like? Mother, what is
being in love?
You and I have never talked much about what being in love is, what it should feel like, how you and Daddy felt about each other when you were married. What did
you
feel, Mother? What was it like for you? What should it be like for a woman? What should she feel? Mother
—
what is love like for a woman? Please tell me, if you know
.